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This listing contains all the analytical materials posted on the Russia Matters website. These include: RM Exclusives, commissioned by Russia Matters exclusively for this website; Recommended Reads, deemed particularly noteworthy by our editorial team; Partner Posts, originally published by our partners elsewhere; and Future Policy Leaders, pieces by promising young scholars and policy thinkers. Content can be filtered by genre and subject-specific criteria and is updated often. Gradually we will be adding older Recommended Reads and Partner Posts dating back as far as 2011.

book review

How the US Managed, and Mismanaged, Russia: A Superstar Diplomat Tells His Story

Graham AllisonMarch 12, 2019
RM Exclusives

William Burns’ new book describes his warnings to the Bush administration that pushing for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine would spur Moscow to use armed force in the former and to meddle in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

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research paper

Lessons for Leaders: What Afghanistan Taught Russian and Soviet Strategists

Simon SaradzhyanFebruary 28, 2019
RM Exclusives

Moscow’s military intervention in Afghanistan lasted nearly a decade (1979-1989). It cost the USSR dearly in blood, treasure and power, but imparted lessons as well. Can some of these prove useful to the U.S. today?

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research paper

Jihadists from Ex-Soviet Central Asia: Where Are They? Why Did They Radicalize? What Next?

Three authors draw on field work and other research to assess the motives, prospects and threats linked to Central Asian jihadists, including the thousands who joined Islamic State and other violent extremists in the Middle East.

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Competing Views on Russia

Robert Legvold on Russia: Insights and Recommendations

RM StaffNovember 20, 2018
RM Exclusives

“The chances in … the next 10-15 years of a nuclear weapon being fired in anger are far greater now than they ever were during the Cold War.” This and more from one of America’s top Russia scholars.

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article

The August War, Ten Years On: A Retrospective on the Russo-Georgian War

Michael KofmanAugust 17, 2018
Recommended Reads

In 2008, Moscow demonstrated the will and ability to actively contest the U.S. vision for European security, veto NATO expansion in its neighborhood and challenge Washington’s design for a normative international order where small states can determine their own affairs independent of the interests of great powers.

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issue brief

When Does Vladimir Putin’s Russia Send In Troops?

Simon SaradzhyanAugust 07, 2018
RM Exclusives

Examining Putin’s three military interventions abroad, the author sees a pattern in which two conditions must be present for Russia to intervene with force: a threat to its vital interests and a reasonable chance of success.

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explainer

25 Years of Nuclear Security Cooperation by the US, Russia and Other Newly Independent States: A Timeline

At a time when the U.S. and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union still saw each other as mortal enemies, they found the courage, creativity and capacity for trust to work together in the name of preventing nuclear catastrophe.